


Burnout Prince

by Anonymous



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Multi, relationships and characters to be added in the chapters they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:54:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29859786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Canon rework starting about a year post-Cell.Something's happening to Gohan. There's something wrong with his Saiyan half, there always has been. But the universe is wide and strange, and there are dangers waiting in the wings for Planet Earth. It needs a powerhouse, and Goku's very annoyingly still dead.
Relationships: Piccolo/Son Gohan, light piccolo/gohan, probably unrequited dende/gohan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8
Collections: Anonymous





	Burnout Prince

Gohan counted his life in seconds, sometimes. It was a surprisingly effective method. If he could just survive the next few seconds. If he could just keep the lie going for another few seconds. Vegeta was pressing close to the limits of that coping mechanism.

"Is this really all you can do?" Vegeta asked, as Gohan tried and failed to lift himself from the floor. He'd jacked the artificial gravity way up, and Gohan hadn't been ready for it. Somehow, Vegeta knew, Gohan had been posturing.  
"What, did you pull something meditating with the big green pushover?"  
Gohan fell back prone, hitting the floor hard, feeling his body compress. Vegeta stood over him.

"Piccolo's not a pushover," Gohan managed. "He's got better form than you."

Vegeta uncharacteristically ignored the snipe. He squared his boot heel on Gohan's back, pressing down with an added force.

"You could always go Super Saiyan," Vegeta said, pensive.

"I'd rather not," Gohan said. He counted the seconds he'd need to keep his voice level, like this was no big deal. "It's a bit excessive for a sparring match."

"So you've said," Vegeta taunted. "But you haven't gone Super Saiyan in quite a while, have you? Let alone that fantastic Saiyan 2 I haven't gotten the hang of just yet. Not in a long time. Not since Cell."

"Screw you," Gohan hissed, feeling the boot come down harder. The worst part was that this was just how Vegeta thought people were supposed to train. That pesky Saiyan aptitude for motivation in times of emotional duress. Another thing Gohan didn't get from his father.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten how," Vegeta said.

Gohan didn't say anything to that. Seconds. He thought about the controls. He could guess Vegeta's override, he definitely already knew Bulma's. He just needed an excuse. Come on, think. Think. That was supposed to be his only advantage over these people.

"Why don't I show you?" Vegeta asked, and drew his power up.

"You don't know what you're doing," Gohan protested.

Too late. Vegeta slipped into Super Saiyan fairly easily, these days. Minimal yelling. The ease of all of it was so galling, just like it used to be. For just the barest instant, Gohan hated Vegeta.

"You don't understand," Gohan tried again. The pain against the small of his back casually doubled. He wondered if Vegeta would actually kill him on accident, expecting him to transform. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't remember the overrides now.

"You're right, Gohan. I don't understand. I don't understand how a weakling like you is Kakarot's offspring. I don't see what he saw in you. I don't even see what _I_ saw in you, back at the Cell Games. You're pathetic! Where has it all gone? Where's your rage? Where's your strength? Where's your Saiyan pride?"

_"I'm not a fucking Saiyan!"_

Shit. Oh shit. He could feel it. Like lightning in his skin. Mentally, he cried out for help. That other thing was coming. The Super Saiyan.

It felt too big for him. Like he might burst, and the Saiyan might come forward, take control forever. That creature made of rage and pain. Goku and Vegeta seemed fine. They seemed like they all inherited some Saiyan gene, some control mechanism for the strength, that just skipped Gohan over. His vision blurred red.

Piccolo, hurry, he thought in what was left of his brain, as he saw Vegeta's eyes widen in anticipation. In recognition, and then _not_ in recognition. Gohan had him by the throat. He tossed him through the building, straight up, thank Dende.

"It hurts," he tried to say, but he wasn't sure it came out. He was still hurting Vegeta. Just, pummeling him. Blindly. Like a good Saiyan warrior. Some vicious thing inside Gohan said: this is what he wanted, wasn't it? He wanted to see Gohan's strength, well. Here it is.

Gohan recoiled at that thought. He wanted to believe it wasn't him. It was the Saiyan. A flash of green at his peripheries stopped him in his tracks, and Vegeta fell out of the sky.

"Gohan?" Piccolo asked, face all concern. For a moment, Gohan was terrified that the Saiyan would hurt Piccolo too, and he recoiled again, but this time his body responded, curling into a ball. He felt the energy flicker.

"Piccolo," he whimpered piteously. "It hurts so badly."

And then nothing.

And then the Lookout. He had a water towel on his head. Everything was very bright. Piccolo was sitting at his side with a look of sheer frustration.

"Piccolo, I'm sorry."

"Vegeta told me what happened. I made him give me the details. He had no right to speak to you that way."

"It's not his fault, what I did. It's the Saiyan."

Piccolo looked at him in confusion, now, and that concern again. It was funny, most people saw Piccolo as stoic. To Gohan, his face was expressive. Wide mouth, and a brow that conveyed a downright insane nuance of emotion. And when he was particularly frustrated, his left antenna twitched, the same way the muscles in his jaw might, though that was usually in annoyance. The jig was up. No more seconds to count. Time for the truth.

"Imagine you could be super strong, stronger than anything you've ever heard of, but every time you do it's essentially a panic attack. Like, you could work through it and save a lot of people, and you're probably not going to die from it, since you're invulnerable when you're in that mode. And your super-strong, super-beloved father can do it too. He does it all the time, and he saves a lot of people with it. But it doesn't hurt him. Even a little. And he's very... immature? Flaky? Unreliable? Oblivious? So you can't just tell him the way it's making you feel. You let him teach you how to do it, and how to keep it going for longer, and he never even notices how much it hurts you, and by the time you're back among people who _would_ notice, you're so good at hiding it they don't. You want them to realize it, but there are bigger things to worry about. You have to fight this big bad. And you do, and you do what everyone needs from you, thanks to this awful thing that hurts you, but something snaps. You go further than you've ever gone. You let it take over. And it burns you up. And when you've finally properly come to, its anger and its hubris ruined everything, and your father's dead, and everyone is just calling it fucking Saiyan 2. Because for Vegeta and the now dead Goku it's just a fucking game."

At some point, Gohan had teared up. A few fell and Piccolo passed a clawed hand over his cheek to dry them without a second thought.

"I'm sorry we've put you through all of this," Piccolo said, watching Gohan's cheek, and then his hair, and then his eyes. "I'm sorry you suffered like this in silence. I won't let you face this alone any longer."

"It doesn't matter," Gohan said. "I'm the strongest thing on Earth. We're going to have to use that strength sooner or later. I just... I can't do it. It's broken. It's always been broken, but it's worse now. Vegeta was right. I'm not the potential you all saw in me. It was a fluke. I'm not a Saiyan, I'm a mongerel."

"Don't say a word against yourself, Gohan," Piccolo growled. "I won't hear it. You saved this stupid blue ball, and at obvious personal cost. They owe you, not the other way around."

Gohan sighed, and let Piccolo draw him into a hug. It felt--nice. When was the last time someone had hugged him? It was probably also Piccolo. He tended to dodge his mother's hugs. "So where do we go from here?" he asked.

"No one's going to make you go Super Saiyan. I'll be having words with Vegeta."

"Okay," Gohan said. "That's probably for the best, since I can't control it."

"Honestly, this explains a lot," Piccolo said. "Why you've never enjoyed fighting the way Goku and Vegeta do. But some of this sounds like trauma. Nail's raising alarm bells in the back of my mind. We're going to focus on that first."

"I don't think that even if I fix whatever's wrong with me, you know, mentally, I'll be able to go back to using Super Saiyan with any control again. I think it's always been unnatural for me."

"Gohan, will you quit that?"

"Quit what?"

"Strategizing. Look at me."

They locked eyes. Piccolo's were black, dark as anything. Gohan could almost see his reflection in them.

"I am not looking to fix you so that you can act in your role as Earth's guardian in your father's absence. I've always thought that was a bullshit responsibility to heap on a child's shoulders. I am looking to help you, because you're a good person, and I don't want you to be in pain. I don't care about how strong you are in a fight. That is my absolute last concern right now."

"All the more reason for me to be thinking about it," Gohan countered. "With dad gone, people are going to come knocking sooner or later."

"We'll deal with it. We always do. Promise me that for now you're going to rest, and we'll figure out the rest as we go along. You focus on recuperating, and I'll go hunting for some solutions on the planetary defense front."

Gohan searched Piccolo's face for hesitation, but there wasn't any, of course. He nodded. "All right. Your way first."

"Good," Piccolo said, visibly relaxing. "First thing, I want you to talk to Dende, let him scan your ki. We need to know if your tangle with Vegeta messed with anything."

Gohan nodded. Sensible. And playing to Gohan's strategizing. A compromise.

"And I'm talking to your mother. You're staying here for a few days."

"The hell I am," Gohan said, affronted. "I've got tests!"

"You've never once called in sick at school, Gohan. You've got credibility to burn. We're taking this seriously, all right? Give me three days, and I promise I'll find some kind of workaround."

Gohan mulled it over. Chi-Chi didn't exactly like Piccolo, so it wasn't going to be a pleasant conversation. But he could offer one thing to make it go a bit easier. "Bring me my books, then. From home. I'll study while I'm up here."

Piccolo nodded. After another hug, where Piccolo carded his claws through Gohan's black hair, he flew off, and Gohan righted himself and went in search of Dende.

He found Earth's de facto God meditating in the courtyard.

"Hi, Dende," Gohan began. The teenaged Namekian's eyes shot open. In an instant he was in front of Gohan.  
"Gohan! Are you all right? I saw the whole thing. And Piccolo let me pass a bit of healing over you, but he needed to talk to you, and I didn't see that part. Do you want me to fuck Vegeta up for you?"

"Geez, Dende," Gohan managed, as Dende's smaller claws searched him all over. "Give a guy a second to breathe."

"Sorry, sorry," Dende said, rubbing the back of his own neck now, guiltily. "I just worry about you. What can your almighty God do for you?"  
"Piccolo invited me over to stay for a couple nights," Gohan said sheepishly. "But it's really kinda your place more than his--"  
"--obviously you're staying," Dende said. "I don't eat food, but there's plenty up here. You've always been welcome on the Lookout."  
"Thanks, Dende," Gohan said. "Really, right now, that means a lot."  
"It's the least I could do," Dende said. "No, seriously, the least. What else?"  
"Can you look over my ki? Long story short, going Super Saiyan really screws with me, for some reason. Like it's unnatural. I really can't stand doing it."

Dende frowned, bringing his hand up to his chin pensively. "That's really strange, Gohan. Of course I'll take a look, though with a power level like yours It might take a while. Are you okay to start now, or do you maybe want to take a rest, get something to eat first? You can tell me the long story, if you feel up to it."

Gohan nodded. That made sense. He was really, honestly, ravenously hungry all of a sudden.

Somewhere far down below, Piccolo felt like screaming at himself. From the second he'd felt Gohan calling to him this morning he'd known something was pervasively wrong. But on this level...

The way the kid's face tightened. _You want them to realize it_. He wondered how many times Gohan had been crying for help and he'd just ignored it because of the whole Cell lunacy. Even now, Gohan was relentless, trying to calculate how much more of himself he could squeeze out like the toothpaste in the kid's bathroom that needed replacing.

"Idiot," he hissed under his breath as he slowed his approach to Chi-Chi's house on the outskirts of the forest. Instinctively he headed towards the window to Gohan's room, but it wouldn't do to just let himself in like that. No, for once he'd have to use the front door. And Chi-Chi would have to actually be aware he was in her house. When was the last time that had happened? When he and Goku had been training Gohan at some point, surely.

He knocked on the door. Chi-Chi answered, holding Goten. She seemed surprised to see him, but again, she couldn't really sense energies.

"I need to talk to you," he said, pre-empting her. She appraised him, and nodded, assuming correctly who it would be about. She ushered him in and sat him at the kitchen table. The furniture was all a bit too small for him. Chi-Chi disappeared for a moment to put Goten away and when she returned she was all business.  
"What's going on?" she asked.

Piccolo drew a deep breath. Centered himself. In cases of interpersonal conflict, he had shockingly little experience.

"Gohan has been in incredible pain for a long time. He's just smart enough to hide it, even from the people who love him the most."

Chi-Chi looked affronted, but at least she wasn't kicking him out. He chanced it and kept going.

"His father did something incredibly irresponsible, making Gohan fight Cell without fully understanding Gohan's problems, or his relationship to the Saiyan transformation. For Gohan, the transformation is painful, both physically and psychologically. There's something seriously wrong."

"I don't understand," Chi-Chi said slowly.

"Gohan can't perform Super Saiyan 2 again safely. Earth is completely without a protector until we can find a safe way of powering Gohan up without relying on it. If Vegeta or anyone else tries to force Gohan into a transformation again, I'll _personally_ send them to relay my message to Goku in fucking _heaven_."

Piccolo couldn't remember the last time he'd cursed.

His arms were folded, the usual picture of austere condescension and distant mysticism; but he couldn't be in a less usual mood. He'd failed Gohan entirely. And so had Chi-Chi, and none more or more maliciously than Goku. Still, he could really only point to himself.

"What's wrong with Gohan? You're not explaining yourself."

"That's because it's not for me to say. You can have a conversation with him, when he's feeling up to it. I'm only here to tell you Gohan is going to be spending some time at the Lookout, and I'll not have him pressured by you or anyone else. This also applies with regards to his studies, effective immediately."

Gohan's mother was an extremely practical woman, except where her eldest son was involved.

"His exams are on right now."

"I know. He wants me to bring his books."

"The Lookout isn't a great learning environment for--"

"--He's been hiding extreme health problems from all of us for years, and you think the Lookout is what's going to have an adverse impact on his develpment?"

Chi-Chi's lip pursed. Her jet-black hair was a bit like Gohan's. A shade silkier than his father's. Their eyes were much more similar. "If he's really that unwell, he should be here."

Piccolo softened to that argument. Even for just a day, Gohan would miss her and Goten. "I agree. As long as you're willing to let him take it easy, I think it'd be best if he recovered here. But first I want him to stay at the Lookout, so that Dende can check him over."

It was going over well until the end. "More Demons," she muttered.

"Actually, Dende's from the Namekian _Dragon_ Clan. _I'm_ the Demon."

"I remember," she said, arms crossed.

He knew she was just trying to do right by her son, he knew he wasn't being fair. No mother on Earth would react well to the news he'd just told her.

"I'm taking his books," he said. He left out the window.

When he saw the Lookout again, and sensed Gohan, a strange relief flooded him. Gohan and Dende were meditating, as Dende parsed his ki. Gohan's face looked less troubled, even light, and parsing ki wasn't the only reason Piccolo had wanted the kid to spend some time with the young Namekian. Dende was utterly _devoted_ to Gohan, always had been. Actually, oddly enough, most Namekians seemed to have a soft spot for the demi-Saiyan, but Gohan had saved Dende's life back on Namek and the kid still wasn't over it.

Gohan's eyes came open gradually, and saw Piccolo, and brightened further. "Piccolo! You brought everything!" His eyes narrowed. "How was my mother?"

"Understandably concerned," Piccolo said. He set the books down next to Gohan. "But she's fine with a couple days of you up here. She wants you to talk to her."

"First thing tomorrow morning," Gohan promised. The sun was hanging low, by now. Piccolo had hardly noticed.

"So, what's going on?" Piccolo asked Dende. "Is Gohan all right?"

"Yes and no," Dende answered. "There's something really strange going on. I can see his ki, and it's a bit out of tune, but it's like it's spread thin over something else. I've really never felt anything like it. I was wondering if Kami might have any experience to lend."

Piccolo checked inside his head. "Kami says kick it to King Kai."

"All right," Dende said. "Then that's what we'll do. In the meantime, sleep. Been a busy day in Godhood."  
Gohan cuffed him on the shoulder, gathered his books, and then looked uncertainly at Piccolo.

"You've got a room. I'll show you."

The Lookout was good at providing for guests. Piccolo led him down an arched hallway, and at the end there were two doors in the white stone.

"This one's yours," he said, opening the leftmost door. "The other's mine."

Inside was an old-fashioned villa room. Piccolo didn't really know much about Earth culture, he didn't really know much about any culture, but he'd been assured it could be described as Mediterranean. It had a desk, and Gohan put the books there before sitting on the bed in silence. Piccolo sat next to him. They were good at communicating like this, or so Piccolo had thought.

He'd thought he and Gohan understood each other perfectly. Turns out, he'd been half blind the entire time.

"Gohan, I'm--"  
"--Could you--"

They looked at each other. Piccolo nodded.

"Could you stay with me?" Gohan asked, looking away.

"Yeah," Piccolo said. "Of course."

Anything. Gohan had been the first person to show Piccolo any real kindness. He joked about Dende, but really he was worse. He'd do anything for the one unequivocally good person in the universe. The Lookout got dark, and Gohan laid over the bed, not bothering with covers, crossing his arms under his head. Piccolo finally laid next to him, and the kid turned his back. They used to lie like this eons ago, when Gohan was just a child. It was a concerning thought, but Piccolo couldn't quite pick out why.

Piccolo thought on it as Gohan fell asleep, relaxed against the side of the Demon's chest. He thought about the look of peace on Gohan's face when he meditated. About the wrought look of terror as he flickered in and out of Super Saiyan. _Piccolo, it hurts so badly_.

He's _still_ a child, Piccolo realized. They'd done all of this to a fourteen year old.


End file.
